Materials

Breidenbach specialises in processing soft thermoplastics. That means we are expert at processing all kinds of soft plastics.

There are thousands of soft thermoplastics on the market, making the options seem endless. To bring in a bit of order, there is a material classification system that follows DIN ISO 18064:2005.

On our website, we describe the 6 major basic types of thermoplastic elastomers that we use. These materials always combine a thermoplastic with an elastomer – to make thermoplastic elastomers. This can be done in two ways.

Block CopolymersThe first variety is that of the so-called block copolymers. With these, the molecular chains of elastomers (such as the commonly used SEBS) are combined with the molecular chains of polymers. That results in a material in which the molecules contain elastomer block and a polymer block.

TPS, TPU, TPA and TPC are block copolymers.

Polymer blendsThe second variety is that of the polymer blends.

In these, an elastomer particle is mixed in an olefin-based polymer (such as PP). The elastomer is enclosed by the polymers, whereby the polymer serves as a binding agent.